On June 30, the Election Assistance Commission released the results of the 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey. According to a press release, the report “covers topics such as voter participation, voter registration, voter list maintenance, and election technology, as well as early and Election Day polling place operations for the general election.”

Ballotpedia has focused on the survey’s reporting on rejected mail-in ballots across all 50 states and the territories and, in the past, has compared the numbers between cycles. With the 2024 information available, Ballotpedia has continued this trend and has compared the 2024 findings to past cycles.

2024 saw the second-most mail-in ballots cast nationwide, behind only 2020. In terms of raw rejection numbers, 2024 had the highest number of any election cycle going back to 2016. The rejection rate of 1.2% is higher than in 2020 and 2016, the two presidential election cycles that preceded it. However, the 2024 rejection rate is lower than 2018 and 2022, which were both midterm election cycles.

The three states with the highest rejection rate in 2024 were Arkansas (8.8%), Delaware, (5.1%), and Oklahoma (4.3%). The three states with the lowest rejection rates were Vermont, Maine, and Indian, with 0.2% each. Arkansas also had the highest rejection rate in 2020, with 6.4%, marking a 2.4% increase in rejections from 2020 to 2024. Of the states decided within five percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, Arizona had the lowest rejection rate of 0.9%, the 28th highest nationwide, and Michigan had the highest rejection rate of 3.1%, the sixth-highest nationwide.

The most common reason that ballots were rejected in 2024 was for non-matching signatures, which accounted for 40.7% of rejected ballots. The second most common reason was other reasons, which comprised 18.1% of rejected ballots. Page 16 of the EAC report defines other reason as: “‘All signature issues’, ‘Neither returned undeliverable nor returned by the voter,’ multiple issues with a single mail ballot, and the rejection reason not being specified.” These reasons make up more than half of all rejected ballots.